Dear All,
Kevin Outterson and I recently shared our analysis of the NICE/NHS England pilot of an antibiotic procurement subscription model (link to that newsletter).
The NICE/NHS team have now released a post-webinar FAQ document. Here is the link to the document … and I’ve also added the link to the initial webpage (cited just above) discussing the pilot project.
Among other things, the FAQ confirms the idea that Kevin and I mooted about NICE/NHS England using a figure of ~3% as their estimate of the “fair share” of the value of a high-end innovative antibiotic. They agree with the idea that an upper-end award of GBP 10m/year x 10 years scales to a global reward approaching $4b. Here are some text excerpts:
- “The UK accounts for about 2.4% of global sales of antibiotics and 4.2% of GDP of the G20.
- “The antibiotic reimbursement contract proposed covers just the NHS in England which represents 84% of the UK.
- “We believe that if the £10m, on offer from this contract, was scaled up from 3% – 3.5% (England’s share) then global revenues would be between $3.5bn to $4bn over 10 years.
- …
- “This is in the $2bn – $4bn range for global sales suggested by independent commentators.
- “While the UK is taking an important step, this project cannot solve the global antimicrobial pipeline on its own.
- “For our work to have the full effect, we need other countries to offer similar incentives in their own domestic markets, alongside regional or global market incentives solutions.”
Once again, I am VERY impressed by the steps being taken here!
With thanks to the team in the UK for carrying on with this project despite COVID-19, –jr
PS: There are starting to be articles that discuss the potential impact of antibacterial resistance in the care of patients suffering from COVID-19. An example is this Scientific American blog. It would of course make sense that pneumonia from COVID-19 could lead to hospital- or ventilator-associated pneumonia which, in turn, could be due to a resistant strain, but I don’t think that COVID-19 would otherwise be a specific driver of resistance. Is anybody aware of specific data on this? It might make an interesting newsletter.
John H. Rex, MD | Chief Medical Officer, F2G Ltd. | Operating Partner, Advent Life Sciences. Follow me on Twitter: @JohnRex_NewAbx. See past newsletters and subscribe for the future: https://amr.solutions/blog/. All opinions are my own.
Current funding opportunities:
- Open now through 9 Apr 2020: NIAID Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) soliciting contract proposals for preclinical and clinical development of vaccines, therapeutic, and diagnostics for microbial pathogens. Go here for more.
- Dates for the 2020 funding rounds for Novo REPAIR Impact Fund will be announced May 2020. Go here for current details.
- 2020 funding rounds for CARB-X have not been announced.
- The Global AMR R&D Hub’s dynamic dashboard (link) summarizes funders and projects by geography, stage, and more.
Upcoming meetings of interest to the AMR community:
- 28 Apr 2020 (online, 17:00-18:30 CEST): GARDP REVIVE webinar. Title: “Inhaled antimicrobials: Do we get the drug to the bug?” Speaker: Harm A. W. M. Tiddens. Go here to register.
- 9 Jul 2020 (online, 09:00-10:30 CEST): GARDP REVIVE webinar. Title: “The challenges and opportunities for antimicrobial R&D in low- and middle-income countries – India case study.” Speaker: Anand Anandkumar. Go here to register.
- 17 Jul-2 Aug 2020 (Marine Biology Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA): Residential course entitled “Molecular Mycology: Current Approaches to Fungal Pathogenesis.” This 2-week intensive training program has run annually for many years and gets outstanding reviews. Go here for details.
- 29 Jul-2 Aug 2020 (Philadelphia, PA): Small World Initiative Instructor Training Workshop – training for undergraduate professors and high school teachers in wet lab techniques, parallel curricula, pedagogical instruction to engage students in the hunt to find new antibiotics in soil. Go here to register.
- 4 Aug 2020 (Silver Spring): FDA workshop entitled “Development Considerations of Antifungal Drugs to Address Unmet Medical Need.” Go here to register.
- 5 Aug 2020 (Silver Spring): FDA workshop entitled “Developing Antifungal Drugs for the Treatment of Coccidioidomycosis (Valley Fever) Infection.” Go here to register.
- 24-25 Aug 2020 (Basel): BEAM-, Novo REPAIR-, CARB-X-, DZIF-, ND4BB-, ENABLE-supported (among a long list!) Conference on Novel Antimicrobials and AMR Diagnostics. Details are here.
- September 2020. University of Sheffield (UK). Applications are being taken for a new 1-year (full-time) or 2-year (part-time) Masters of Science course in Antimicrobial Resistance. The program runs annually from September and covers microbiology, clinical practice and policy. The course webpage is here.
- 9-10 Sep 2020 (Washington, DC): US PACCARB public meeting. Go here for details.
- 22-25 Sep 2020 (Albuquerque, New Mexico): Biannual meeting of the MSGERC (Mycoses Study Group Education and Research Consortium). Save-the-date announcement is here, details to follow.
- 17-25 Oct 2020 (Annecy, France): Interdisciplinary Course on Antibiotics and Resistance (ICARe). This is a soup-to-nuts residential course on antibiotics, antibiotic resistance, and antibiotic R&D. The course is very intense, very detailed, and gets rave reviews. Registration is here and is limited to 40 students.
- 26-29 Oct 2020 (Rotterdam), Annual ESPID meeting (European Society for Pediatric ID, #38)
- 10-13 Apr 2021 (Vienna): Annual ECCMID meeting (#31)
- 20-24 June 2021 (Toronto): International Symposium on Pneumococci and Pneumococcal Diseases (ISPPD-12). Go here for details.
- 3-7 Jun 2021 (Anaheim), ASM Microbe 2021. Go here for details.
